“I shall be distressed if you are not,” he said, almost eagerly. “I beg you to say freely what you have in your mind.”
She did not speak at once, but sank into a chair, with a long-drawn respiration that might mean either sadness or relief. When Gaston had brought another chair and placed it close beside her and seated himself, she looked up and met his gaze. In the eyes of both there was the eagerness of youth—in the girl’s a hesitating wistfulness, in the man’s a subdued fire, somewhat strange to them. He was conscious of being deeply stirred, and if he had spoken first his words would probably have betrayed this, but it was Margaret who broke the silence, in tones that were calm and steady, and a little sad.
“Mr. Gaston,” she said, turning her eyes away from his face and looking into the fire, “it wouldn’t be worth while, I think, for me to pretend to feel the same toward you, after what has happened; it would be only pretence. Twenty-four hours ago I should have said you were the young man of all my acquaintance whom I felt to be the truest gentleman. I would not say this to your face now, except that it is quite passed.”
“I am glad that you have said it—most glad that it was ever so,” he said, with a hurried ardor; “but it is a great height to fall from. And have I indeed fallen?”
“Yes,” replied Margaret, not smiling at all, but speaking very gravely. “You began to fall the moment Major King came into this room last night, and you have been falling ever since, as I have gone over it all in my mind. You reached the bottom when my cousin came in this evening, and the shock was so great that it caused a slight rebound; but I don’t suppose that signifies much.”
If the girl’s eyes had not been fixed upon the fire she would probably have checked her speech at the sight of the expression which settled upon her companion’s face the moment Major King’s name was mentioned. But she did not see it, and was therefore unprepared for the hard, cold tone in which his next words were uttered.
“I have felt and acknowledged my fault, where your cousin was concerned,” he said. “Mr. Decourcy is a gentleman, and nothing but the fact of my being preoccupied with the resentment I felt at certain words of yours at the time, would have caused me to act toward him as I did. This explains, but does not justify my conduct, which I have acknowledged to be unjustifiable. But in the other case, Miss Trevennon, I must maintain that I acted rightly.”
“If that is your feeling about it,” Margaret said, “I think this conversation had better end here.”
“Why, Miss Trevennon?” he asked, a little defiantly. “I see no reason why it should.”
“Because its object, as I suppose, has been to bring about an understanding between us; and since you have defined your sentiments, it is clear to me that we could no more come to understand each other than if you spoke Sanscrit and I spoke French.”